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Tuesday, 12 April 2016

There have been a lot of debates within RASEL over the last year which I hope this post helps clarify. I think the main question comes down to whether we are an assembly or cadre.

Question 1: Assembly or cadre? Is RASEL (a) an example of an open community group? That is, a group of 'active' (activist) community members? Or (b) is RASEL a group (cadre) for libertarian socialists? Or is it both? (From the below discussions, I think there are problems with trying to be both.)

It should be noted that we are not the only organisation which faces this type of question. A parallel example that might help us think about this is the International Workers of the World syndicalist union. Syndicalism means they want the union to eventually be massive and take over all wageplaces in a revolution. It is supposed to an anti-capitalist organisation. However, it has members that are not anti-capitalist. Its preamble to the constitution reads:

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

My understanding is that originally (and maybe still now, technically) people who join the IWW are supposed to agree with this statement in order to join. People are supposed to join and become organisers, promoting the idea of anti-capitalism and syndicalism. However, in reality it often doesn't work like this. Often the IWW helps wageplaces* organise themselves and then these wage labourers (e.g. cleaners) often set up their own branch even if they are not all anti-capitalist syndicalists. In other words they are organised how the IWW wants them to organise, but otherwise they are not supporting syndicalism. In the IWW there are sometimes debates as to whether there should be branches like this, or if it should only be open to anti-capitalists.

Although there are differences between the IWW and the Radical Assembly, and RASEL, I think we have a similar kind of debate to address.

(2) Membership: I've said from the start that I favoured a membership. This was on the assumption (without really thinking about it) that we are (b) a group for libertarian socialists. I couldn't see why we would be open to people that weren't showing their dedication to creating libertarian socialism. For me building libertarian socialsm means people are primarily concerned with building community groups (type (a) groups) that could lay the basis for a future socialist society. We wouldn't focus on growing RASEL, but would instead try to grow community groups we start, or pre-existing residential groups such as 'Our Forest Hill' (we'd also try to influence such groups politically), or other types of community projects that get people used to collectively allocating resources and making community decisions.

However, having no membership and being open to nearly everyone makes sense if we are (a) an example of a community assembly ourselves. Only a tiny fraction of the population share our more or less libertarian socialist politics so if we want to be a community group we can't be open to only people that share our goals. We have to be open to a whole range of perspectives. Type (a) groups also don't need to have an agreed strategy. They can deal with problems as they arise, as I assume community groups will do in the future.

I get the feeling at the moment RASEL is stuck between being (a) and (b) at the moment. Or trying to be both. We are very open, unfocussed, laizzes faire, and we don't really have an anti-capitalist strategy (we didn't come up with one at the strategy day), which is something you'd expect from a type (a) open community assembly. But simultaneously, we have quite an exclusionary libertarian socialist ideology laid out in our principles (exclusionary in that not many people share it). So not many people want to join. So we're open and non-strategic, yet tiny all at the same time. The worst of both worlds. We are acting like an active community group, asking people from our tiny group to go to this action and that action. Meanwhile the organising work such as making the stall (and banner, and fliers/posters) has has taken about 6 months. If we include public education as cadre-type work, we also haven't made any videos or articles or podcasts. Our educational readings, presentations and discussions have ended up being just for each other rather than the public. Basically, I can't see what community organising we're doing as a group. So we're not a cadre. But we're also far too small to be a type (a) community group.

(3) Censorship: On Facebook I've favoured having a 'page' only type set up, where the people that regularly come to meetings (unofficial members) invite people to our activities or post our information. I've wanted to not have the FB group or have it closed to only the members (about 15 of us) to discuss things. I think this restrictive FB policy makes sense if we are a type (b) group. I didn't understand why we were letting anyone join the FB group and post almost anything. For example, stuff about Momentum. We aren't working with Momentum (although I wouldn't be opposed if people wanted to), so I didn't see it as suitable to be posted by random people we don't know. It was distorting the message of 'the group' (people that go to meetings) and distracting from our projects. If we're going to let people post stuff about Momentum, or any other political stuff the group isn't involved with, why not let people post other irrelevant stuff about sports or shopping, or holidays? Where do we draw the line? However, if we are a type (a) open group it makes sense for anyone in South East London to be able to join the FB group and post pretty much what they like. That we also have an FB page which the informal membership controls implies to me we are trying to be both (a) and (b).

I think we need to think about and clarify what RASEL is to help us clarify our tasks.

*Note I'm trying to not to use the word 'workplace' or 'worker,' as I think it reinforces gendered ideas of work that overlook house work as being work.

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Authored by Nick Srnicek and Alex Willaims, (2015), Verso.

The title

I was reluctant to read the book 'Inventing the future: Postcapitalism and a world without work'. Almost everything about the title of the book put me off. For a start, and this is perhaps a matter of taste, the phrase 'Inventing the future' struck me as extremely grandiose and pretentious. 'I bet they're idiots', I thought to myself, upon first hearing the title. 'Pretentious, self-aggrandising, ungrounded, twits. I bet that book sucks.' Having said this, it should be remembered that publishers often have a say over book titles.

My second problem with the title was more analytical, and it seemed this was less likely to be an issue with the publishers. They use the phrase 'post-capitalism' in the title. Is this some trendy, uber-non-offensive way of saying 'socialism'? When I hear such phrases, alarm bells start ringing, and I suspect I'm about to engage with someone apolitical. Someone that doesn't see the necessity of class conflict. Furthermore, the word 'post' implies a patience with capitalism which I don't have. I’m reminded of when Paul Mason turned up at Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything conference and he gave a talk in which it seemed he thought advances in technology would eventually lead rather naturally to an alternative type of economy (although I couldn’t quite grasp what kind of economy he was talking about). And he didn’t mention class struggle. I'm not a post-capitalist, I'm an anti-capitalist. I don't want to wait for capitalism to somehow naturally run its course and develop into something different. God knows how long that will take and how much more damage will have been done to people and planet in that time. No. I want people to come together to force through a socialist revolution right now. In fact I'm a bit vexed it didn't happen yesterday.

Thirdly, 'a world without work', suggested that this was a book about vision. This is fine, but choosing this one feature of a future society to focus on - labour practices (or lack thereof), seemed problematic. What about the political set up? The decision making? The title suggested an automated utopia, but an automated world is only a utopia for all people if they have equal control over goods and services. Again, is this going to be a communist/socialist world? And did the authors plan on laying out some ideas for getting there? If not, the book seemed more or less a waste of time. There are already many utopian schemes such as 'the Venus Project', which don't seem particularly relevant to anything.

But I decided to read the book. A friend of mine had started reading it and, talking to her, I got the impression that the book was as scathing about the state of the current-day revolutionary left as me. So I thought it might be interesting. Another reason I thought I should check it out was that one of the authors is speaking at the Radical Assembly's Future Society event, which I don't really plan on going to, but it would be good to know what other people in the network are thinking about. Then I found out Verso had a 90% off sale, so it would cost me less than two quid. Nothing else on the Verso site jumped out at me so I decided to give Inventing the Future a shot.

The book

The book started with a critique of the current day activist left, which I mostly agreed with. They criticise the lack of large scale revolutionary thinking, and also the reactive, fire-fighter politics, and politics of protest prevalent on the left today. I was largely happy with this critique, and think this chapter is probably worth a read.[1] After this critique of the current left's 'folk politics' as they call it, I was waiting for a discussion of how the left could, as a solution to this situation, build mass, powerful working class institutions, perhaps on an international scale which pose a genuine threat to the reigning order. However, such a discussion never came.

Instead, they talked a lot in the book about the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), Friedrich Hayek’s neoliberal think tank. Established in the 1940's, the MPS helped set up several other think tanks, which Srnicek and Williams (S&W) claim are largely responsible for the changes from post-war Keynesianism to our current 'neoliberal' global economic set up. The authors' central proposal was that the left takes influence from this organisation by building its own network of think tanks and becoming influential in education and the mainstream media. I was disappointed by this strategy suggestion to put it mildly.

Firstly, S&W fail to acknowledge that insofar as these neoliberal think tanks gained popularity with power centres, it was because their ideas are supportive of increasing the power of the bourgeoisie. Where their ideas conflict with bourgeois power, they are largely rejected. No head of state considers really implementing Austrian economics, and letting the major banks fail, for example. Further, rather than being masterminded by the MPS, economic shifts towards neoliberalism have largely reflected shifts in the balance of power between, in blunt terms, working class organisations and the bourgeoisie.[2] The idea that this process was driven by any think tanks seems to be a bizarrely naive misreading of history.

Further, the suggestion that leftist think tanks could replicate the supposed ideological success of the MPS, seems fanciful to say the least. This is not to say I don't think the left should have a network of think tanks or try to be as influential as possible in all forms of media and education (although keeping in mind the problems that come with engaging with especially the mainstream media). However, it is ridiculous to suggest the mainstream media and education systems would ever let revolutionaries become anywhere near hegemonic.

Some of S&W's other suggestions were fine, even inspiring. Their proposal that the left needs to reclaim the territory of big visions, progress and utopian thinking was welcome. I enjoyed the discussion of the long term vision of fully automated society in which people are provided for and all are free to pursue their own interests. I could also get on board with some of the reforms they suggest as stepping stones, including universal basic income and a four day working week. They also mention various interesting tactical ideas such as 'proxy strikes' in France where workers don't declare a strike, so still get paid, but allow the community to blockade or occupy the workplace.

However, there are some issues around their future society and reform proposals. Firstly, it is unclear how they are applicable to rural, peasant societies which still exist in large parts of the world. But even further than this, as mentioned, the book isn't very helpful in terms of providing a credible strategy for how the left in the West can get from where it is now, in a state of weak 'folk-politics', to a globally hegemonic movement with the power to achieve fully automated luxury communism, or even the intermittent reforms. So whilst the book has some interesting ideas, it is not really a very practical guide for revolutionaries, as one might hope from the grandiose title 'Inventing the Future'. In fact the core strategy suggestions from S&W, if taken seriously by enough current activists (you never know), could possibly manage to weaken the revolutionary left even further. An impressive feat.

On the other hand, in terms of proposing “the left’s” go-to revolutionary utopian ideas, then the book does this in a lively, and thought-provoking way in parts. And the critique of the present day “left” is largely worth paying attention to. Plus it’s not that long. So overall I found it a good effort and worth reading.

[1]
Having said this, I’m not sure how original the critique is. I feel I’ve been
reading similar critiques for the last 10 years. John Sanbonmatsu’s ‘The
Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy and the Making of a New
Political Subject’ (2003), Monthly Review Press, is an early example. A recent
example is this Scott Jay blog post ‘The postmodern left and the success of
neoliberalism’: http://libcom.org/library/postmodern-left-success-neoliberalism.

[2]
See David Harvey’s book ‘A Brief History of Neoliberalism’. There are free PDFs
of it online. S&W try to refute Harvey’s arguments in the book but I don’t
think they do a good job of it. They argue that because Keyensianism was
dominant and was seen as being in the interest of capitalists, this shows
neoliberalism was not brought about due to class interests. But they fail to
consider that Keyesnianism was temporarily seen as being in the interests of
the bourgeoisie to make concessions to the working class in the face of a
well-organised, potentially revolutionary working class.

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

What is RASEL? Libertarian socialist school?

The question, 'what is RASEL?' has been raised a lot recently. My initial idea is that we should think of ourselves as
a 'libertarian socialist school'. Firstly, let’s look at the 'libertarian socialist' (libsoc) aspect. For me,
'libsoc' means two things. Firstly, it means aiming to take action to create non-oppressive social institutions that manage society in a way which supports human flourishing (replacing the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism,
etc.). Secondly, it means organising in a way which reflects our values as far as possible (i.e. in a non-oppressive, inclusive, supportive way). As we've
discussed, this dual goal of promoting social transformation whilst organising
in a 'prefigurative' way (trying to create the future society in the present) is a traditional libertarian socialist aim. The 'school' aspect of
the 'libsoc school' means that we help each other learn about (including through action) how systems of oppression work and how best to take action in pursuit of a libsoc society, paying attention to
the successes and failures of other groups, as well as our own experiences.

External project ideas

If our goal is creating a libsoc society, our primary aim should be building or laying the foundations of participatory, inclusive social institutions that can manage society in line with our principles. Here are some projects which I think can help build or support these institutions, some of which we've already started working on:

* Supporting wage-place (AKA workplace) organising.

* Building or supporting alternative 'prefigurative spaces' such as the field, community gardens, co-ops, green energy projects etc.

* Apply popular pressure on local and national governments to devolve power downwards through participatory budgeting, and then we encourage marginalised people to participate.* Propaganda/media work.* Radical education projects and debate/discussion societies for everyone.* Helping people organise collective direct actions such as eviction resistance or rent strikes or other political events - and trying to get them to form or join long-term organisations.*Try to make our work replicable or scalable by creating written processes which others can use. *Networking with similar organisations on projects throughout London, the country, and eventually overseas, building a framework for organising joint actions effectively, and becoming capable of acting in moments of economic/social collapse to fill the void with a libsoc order.* Community stalls to inform our work from the street level and also spread our ideas.

Noting that there are already groups doing similar type things, in terms of external actions which
will come out of RASEL, I think there are three categories:

1) RASEL 'students' support projects
or join groups we think are good (e.g. we might decide to help Solfed with a
project). [Note that in this scenario, if people only come to a few meetings but it inspires them to move on to something else that is in line with our goals, we would have been successful.]

2) We change the way outside groups or
projects function. For example, we might bring new meeting processes to outside
groups we're involved with which we learn from RASEL. Or outside groups might
hear about us and copy aspects of what we do, as other RA groups have done
already.

3) We start new projects where
we think there is a gap. Examples include the abortion clinic, college, and library projects.

What can RASEL contribute that isn't already out there?

1. There are lots of political groups which only want change within the current system, or reject visions of systemic change on principle. Or they don't think of strategies for creating systemic change. RASEL can offer a (libsoc) vision and strategic ideas for creating change. 2. There are groups (and individuals) which have a libsoc vision or strategies but don't have a localised network like the RA does. We can use this network to both spread and feed into libsoc ideas and practices. We could eventually seek to decentralise even further.Interested in other people's thoughts.

Friday, 6 November 2015

The Radical Assembly had facilitation training on Tuesday. It doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world but Roger Hallam, one of the founders of the housing co-op network, Radical Roots, gave the training and some interesting questions came up.

How do we introduce ourselves?

Roger explained that a good facilitator
will introduce the meeting by saying what the group is, some guidelines we use
to conduct meetings, and what the meeting is for. This is so that newcomers or
people that have been out of the loop for a while get a better grasp of what is
going on. And it helps give guidance to the meeting. As far as I'm aware we skip the first
part in RASEL of explaining what we are. I think this is because we haven't
fully agreed as a group. I suspect answering the question 'What is RASEL?' will
help us clarify with each other what we should be doing and how we should be
doing it. And this will help us have more productive meetings. Hopefully,
agreeing the flier text will help with this. There has also been talk of a
strategy day, which I think might be helpful.

Exclusion and common knowledge

We spent most of the workshop practising
dealing with problem behaviours during the training. I've been told that we are
quite 'on it' in RASEL in terms of not being exclusionary or oppressive in
terms of gender, although at times we have slipped up. But one thing Roger
highlighted was that activist groups can also be exclusionary by using lots of
technical political language. I imagine this also includes taking for granted
that people will understand political arguments on a range of social issues from
immigration, to gender, to parliamentary politics, to economics and so on. And
being snobbish about people that don't approach each issue from the most
radical angle is a common complaint of leftist groups. I'm not sure how far
this is a problem in RASEL but it’s something else to consider and keep an eye on. Especially if we wish to keep newer people engaged.

I do think in RASEL we've been addressing
this to a large extent by engaging in self-education so that there are not a
few leaders with far broader political knowledge than others. There are plans
to record some of the discussions in some way on the website for new people,
which I think will also be useful.

Facilitation training and compulsory empowerment?

Roger also explained that one of the reasons Radical Roots expanded to dozens of groups quickly, was that each new member of the networkhad to have facilitation training. It was compulsory for people to be empowered this way. The result was that people gained an insight on how to have productive meetings and the organisation's cohesion was very strong. I am personally quite receptive of the idea of at least encouraging all people involved in RASEL to get facilitation training. I'd also be interested in refresher training sessions for experienced facilitators. This isn't just to make sure meetings are as high quality as possible (my experience is meetings work best when everyone supports in facilitation. We could also use such trainings to reconsider and update our meeting processes and guidelines). It is also to help empower people in RASEL in whichever way we can. For example, it is a skill that can be used by individuals when engaged in local campaigns with outside groups. I'd be interested in a group training event every few months or so.

Monday, 12 October 2015

We started the day with reports from regional groups on what we have achieved since May. Without wishing to criticise the other groups, I
felt RASEL has achieved the most. In particular, I think our self-education and
process-building (largely unique to us, it seems - although others have begun
to follow suit) has started to lay the basis for an extremely effective
revolutionary organisation. Also, I feel our planned projects of a stall,
continuing film nights, library campaign, community assembly work, and
solidarity with Bahar, sounded more exciting than the support for outside
campaigns which other groups seem to be focussed on. We also seem to be by far
the biggest group, and have very low turnover in comparison to the others.

2. Ideas from Mary,
Jen and Anna [names changed]

After the report-back from the groups we split into small
groups to talk about how to develop the assemblies. The three people I talked
to (all from SE London but not involved in activism) all had ideas which I
found really useful. The main theme was that we need to make it EASIER for
people to get involved. They want to do stuff but it is often difficult.
Particular suggestions include:

(a) Making it easy for people to do actions close to where
they live - they don't want to travel far to do actions.

(b) Being more welcoming to newbies, including having more
welcoming attitudes and having info materials to help people get up to speed.

(c) More advertising - e.g. posters in Peckham Rye, using
Meet-Up, and an events forum/calendar.

(d) Have someone responsible for outreach.

(I also took the note that we need to 'sort out Facebook
page', as they had ideas for this, but unfortunately I can't remember the
details.)

I agree with all of these ideas, and think we've discussed a
lot of it before, and think we should look at them further as a group.

3. Direct action
workshops and anti-fascism

We split into about eight groups to have direct action
workshops. Workshops were held on a range of issues from environmental activism to sex worker organising. I ended up at the antifascist workshop - one of many topics I know
very little about. I learnt that whilst the fascist threat remains small, it is
growing. 100 fascists recently marched in Dover and were unable to be
stopped. I also learned that there is a lot more to anti-fascism than the
street clashes that get filmed for TV. The London anti-fascists engage in a
range of educational and public relations work, as well as covert intelligence
gathering and sabotage of fascist networks. They also provide training and
services to other movements, including recently the Focus E15 mums. Lots of people involved in anti-fascism do this broader work and not the street mobilisations.

One thing I find very interesting about ant-fascism is that
because of the dangers anti-fascists face, in order to maximise safety, they are often forced to use leftist principles in the most extreme ways. For example, the principle of solidarity becomes hyper important in the streets - i.e. you need to literally make the most solid physical block possible - when defending each other against violent fascists. I also like that the anti-fascists have to combine their left-wing (often anarchist) principles, with extremely thorough preparation and organisation in everything they do - an ethos many leftist organisations could probably learn from.

London Antifascists will be giving a training in
Goldsmiths College on Oct 25th and I think it would be a great learning experience if a lot of us from RASEL could attend. Alternatively, we might be able to organise our own training.

Conclusions

When we first set up RASEL, I was scared by how
much work we had facing us if we were to build a strong, effective
organisation, and it sometimes still intimidates me. However, RA4 was a good
chance to take stock of all we've achieved so far and provided plenty of ideas
for us to be able to carry on developing and moving forwards. So I found it a rewarding
experience. See you soon.